Sharon McLellan started teaching in 1986 and got her first post as a primary headteacher in 2005. Since 2019, she has been the president of primary school leaders’ association AHDS. She talks about why truly empowering schools and replacing high-stakes exams with an all-encompassing portfolio of children’s achievements, from nursery to secondary, has the potential to transform education. She also recalls overcoming childhood shyness and why she would abolish inspection.

1. Who is your most memorable school teacher and why?

My most memorable teacher was Mrs O’Donnell, my P7 teacher. I went to St Andrew’s Roman Catholic Primary School in Dumfries, and that woman was an inspiration. She taught us to believe in ourselves. I was quite shy and nervous but she taught us that the sky was the limit. She was empathetic and kind and motherly, but she was also firm - you did not mess with Mrs O’Donnell.

We used to fight to get to deliver a message to the staffroom during breaktime because she would be there with her cronies in a fog of smoke - but you could hear the sound of laughter. It was something about her different persona in the staffroom: we wanted to know everything about her. She was just wonderful. I loved her to bits. She was a legend.

2. What were the best and worst things about your time at school?

My best time at school was the senior years of secondary. I went to a local Catholic convent school for girls, and the fifth and sixth year were my favourite times. We didn’t have the same subject choice as larger secondaries - I have a terrible sense of direction, so having geography might have helped me, but there was no geography teacher. They made up for that, though, because the teachers got to know us really well and there was a community feel to the school.

I was quite shy and nervous but the music teacher really encouraged me, and I played Joseph in the school musical. I was also a house captain and I loved the responsibility. The downside was there were no boys there - but we made up for it!

The worst thing at school growing up was that insecurity. I came from a council house so was something of a trailblazer in terms of my own family, so sometimes I maybe did not quite fit in. Whether you are talking about 2021 or 1981, young people can be quite cruel and I didn’t quite know where my niche was.

But the worst time was S1, when I had a bad experience with a male maths teacher, who was always bullying me and putting me down. Maths was never my strong point and this teacher took a dislike to me, and it got to the stage where I was terrified to go to class and didn’t want to go to school. He was quite cowardly, though, because my dad went up to the school and stood up to him, and he suddenly backed off.

The next day, I was faced with a very different teacher [in terms of his attitude towards me] and, by the time I was in S6, he thought there was no one like me. But although I forgave him, I did not forget how he had been - and that, at one point, I had wanted to leave because I had been so terrified.

3. Why do you work in education?

As a little girl, I hovered between wanting to be a nurse and a teacher. But, in the end, I almost fell into teaching by accident after working as an au pair just outside Paris. I used to go and pick up the little girl from school and help her with her homework, and I really enjoyed it, so I applied to a college of education and got in.

The short answer to the question, though, is I wanted to make a difference, and you can do that if you work in education with children and young people. It’s lovely to see.

4. What are you most proud of in your career and what is your biggest regret?

I’m most proud of becoming the AHDS president from November 2019. The reason for that is, as I said, that I was quite a shy child - then there I am, making my first and only presidential address to conference that year (because the 2020 conference was all online).

I had to pinch myself. This shy girl from a council house in Dumfries was addressing a huge audience of headteachers and deputes and teachers and prominent figures in education. It was quite a “wow” moment. I was the first in my family to go to university. Then I became a teacher and a depute and a head, so even getting to that was amazing. But to be able to be president of such a respected professional association and the opportunities that has presented for me - I still marvel at that.

In terms of regrets, I’m quite a positive person so I’m not one for regrets but, if you pushed me, I would say my lack of confidence previously held me back. I still talk about the fact I never sat my Higher art - I just did not believe I was good enough, even though I had a wonderful art teacher who kept telling me I was.

I also held back from moving on earlier in my career because I let my anxieties and insecurities in - it was like having that little devil on your shoulder. But I think if the pandemic has shown us anything, it has to be to just go for it. You might not get the job or pass the exam, but give it a go.

5. Who would be your colleagues in the perfect staffroom?

Ordinarily, I love the staffroom - although I am staying away just now, to keep the numbers down. I like sitting, having a bit of banter. It’s the place where teachers should be able to kick off their shoes and relax - a safe haven where opinions can be shared and aired. But, to be honest, there’s nothing worse than a room full of educators talking shop, so I thought about this in terms of what people could bring to the table, be it fun, knowledge, perseverance or just sheer entertainment.

I would want Rosa Parks and Emmeline Pankhurst because they were strong women who did not let class, race or gender get in their way, and I would like to sit beside them and hear their stories at first hand.

For fun and satire, I would choose Billy Connolly and Alan Carr - can you imagine the laughs you would have? And we would have to have food and nibbles, so I would have Tom Kerridge to cater and Sir Tom Hunter as a philanthropist to learn about what he has done and how he dragged himself up by his bootstraps.

Presiding over it all would be my dad. Sadly, he died in late 2017, but he was a character and he would have sat there with his whisky in one hand and his cigarette in the other, thoroughly enjoying what was going on.

6. What are the best and worst aspects of our schools system today?

The best thing is that we are much more child centred. We are trauma informed and aware of nurture and the impact of upbringing on people, and we have inclusion in a way that, even 20 or 30 years ago, was not the case. We are more aware now of the needs of the child or young person.

The worst part - or perhaps the saddest part - is that, despite the efforts of the government, inequalities still exist. I don’t know that throwing money at it is making such a huge difference. What would make a huge difference is having enough staff to sit with a distressed child or someone who needs a bit of extra time. We want to be aspirational but our resources - both human and physical - are finite, and we are limited in the difference we can make to the children who need that extra support and help.

7. Your own teachers aside, who in education has influenced you the most?

For me, it’s [teacher, researcher and author] Dylan Wiliam, whose book Inside the Black Box was published all those years ago, and got us giving feedback to pupils and asking the children what they thought.

Assessment for learning made a difference to the way we teach. If you cook a beautiful dinner and someone says “that’s nice”, that’s not as helpful as if they say “that’s lovely, what did you put in it?” or “next time, maybe you could try…” That gives you something to latch on to. As educators, we have to think about how we give feedback and speak to young people, and respond to what they have done.

8. If you became education secretary tomorrow, what’s the first thing you would do?

I would truly empower schools by handing the reins to schools and their communities, and I would abolish inspection.

Education has become too politicised - the public and politicians need to put their trust in schools and school leaders. I would take away the politicisation of education, put the professionalism back and let people like me get on with the job we are paid to do - so if I was education secretary I might do myself out of a job.

You don’t go to a doctor and tell him or her how to do their job but, when it comes to education, everybody seems to be an expert because they went to school. Just give us the trust and empower us to do what we need to do.

9. What will our schools be like in 30 years’ time?

I would hope that in 30 years’ time, we would have seen an end to the high-stakes testing and exams in S4 to S6. I would like to see, from the day a small child starts nursery, a portfolio that follows them all the way through school looking at their strengths and achievements, with some assessment along the way, but a more holistic approach. The pandemic has shown that, at the moment, we are putting all our eggs in one basket and hoping they don’t crack.

I also think that the formal school starting age should be 7 with an extended kindergarten phase. I absolutely think that would make a huge difference.

So, it’s the start and the finish, if you like: raising the school starting age and getting rid of high-stakes testing. If that happened, education would be very different and really working to the strengths of each child or young person.

10. What one person do you think made the biggest difference to schools and education more generally during the Covid pandemic?

I would struggle to pick one person. The fact that schools, staff and leaders - completely overnight - totally turned things on their head, flipped learning and responded in the way they did, opening up schools to be hubs and delivering online learning with no experience. I think we, collectively, made the biggest difference.

People praise NHS staff, and rightly so, but there has not been so much praise for school staff - people who were scared for their health and their family’s health, but rolled up their sleeves and got on with it.

There was a lot of fear around the first lockdown. Nobody knew how things were going to pan out. We were all learning literally day by day, hour by hour, as things changed and we had guidance flung at us. That proves just how damn good we are.

So, all those people working in schools - I would like to salute them.

Interview by Tes Scotland reporter Emma Seith

This article originally appeared in the 9 April 2021 issue